Cookbook:Menus

Example Menu from Wikibook:Cookbook
Fried Fish Dinner Menu A menu for a fried fish dinner, generally based on southern U.S. traditional practices. Main Course Fried Fish Starch Canned or fresh Green Beans seasoned to your liking, and/or Pinto beans Vegetables / Salads Coleslaw, and/or Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad Dessert Peach Cobbler or Chess Pie Accompaniments Fried potato wedges Beverage Iced Tea Bread Hush Puppies or Corn Bread Sauces, Condiments, Miscellaneous Seafood Cocktail Sauce Lemon slices or wedges. Parsley to decorate Serving Suggestions, Notes for the Cook: This is intended to be a family meal, very informal. Suitable for serving outdoors on a nice day. If you have suitable equipment and space, you may wish to fry the fish outdoors as well, which can have various advantages over doing it inside. The fish would, ideally, be catfish, however the fried fish recipe referenced is not the traditional recipe for fried catfish. The coleslaw recipe is somewhat brief, adjust as needed. Cucumber, Tomato and Onion salad is refreshing and light and may be a good counter-point for the fried items. Note that Chess Pie really must be made at least a day in advance and refrigerated to set. Better recipes are available if you search around. A slight touch of lemon can be added to the recipe. To help keep the appropriate themes in mind, imagine, on a personal level, in times prior to refrigeration, a fisher-personage you know, arriving at your house with a LOT of fish, a whole day's catch, all of which must be cooked and eaten very soon or it will go bad. It may be necessary to alert family and friends that they need to come over and help. Keep in the back of your mind the things that you would have on hand at your location at that time of year and branch out from there.

In the restaurant, a menu is a list of food and beverages offered to customers and the prices. For the domestic chef the menu would be a list of food and beverages to be prepared for a particular meal. Depending on how elaborate one wants to be, the menu may include each meal for a period of time or simply for a single special meal.

A menu may be based on a theme, such as 'Autumn Dinner', a particular holiday, a young child's birthday party, a romantic weekend, etc. It does not have to be limited to one meal and can span as long of a period of time as the author may like, like a long holiday weekend or a longer diet. It is perfectly appropriate to include ideas for table settings, table decorations, accessories, general ambiance, etc.

See the Cookbook's menu template for suggested formatting.